Assisted Suicide

Should One Use Religious Arguments in this Debate?

I stumbled across this somewhat contradictory article that explores the history of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Holland and Belgium - and its increase. It shows out how 'Reformed' theologians and ethicists actually led the way in presenting 'Christian' arguments in support of these practices. 

It's an "interesting" read.

It starts by arguing the debate in liberal-democracies should not be framed in religious terms:

Using religious arguments … are a terrible match for other arguments. Using religious arguments may have a similar effect on ethical discussions as using the word ‘bomb' on an airport: try using it, and you will discover that nothing remains the same. After all, if you tell your audience that God does not allow euthanasia or that God does allow it, what else is there to be said? If the creator of the universe, the power behind the big bang, the creator of 100 billion galaxies, tells us that we should, or should not, allow a specific practice, what other possible reaction is there than to reverently bow our heads and say, ‘Thy will be done'? Resort to religious arguments may torpedo an open, rational, and empirically informed discussion on the pros and cons of euthanasia. It may lead to intellectual sloth rather than foster curiosity. Religion may tempt religious people to ignore rational and empirical arguments, and insofar as they do embrace these arguments, it sometimes remains to be seen whether their use is wholehearted and open-minded. Do these empirical arguments not come in handy to serve their preconceived religious narrative?

I do believe that there is a God, and I am open to the possibility that our choices about life and death matter to God. However, I also believe that if there is a ‘will of God,' the best way to find it out is by exploring all accessible epistemic sources, be it tradition, experience, nature, reason, logic, intuition, and positive law. Religion does not discard these sources but rather justifies and explores them. To name an example outside the realm of euthanasia: I support the UNFCCC Paris climate agreement. The reason is not that God tells us to, nor because the Bible does; it is because scientific evidence tells us that human behaviour is the leading cause of the present climate crisis.

The experience that some religious arguments have a ‘take it or leave it' character and have inscrutable epistemological origins has led some secularised audiences not to take seriously the arguments brought forward by religious people. The allergy to religion can become excessive. Some seem to have come to the point of discarding any argument brought forward by religious people. As soon as they learn that Columbus was a Catholic, these people will tend to question the very existence of America. The vice of intellectual sloth is thus found not only amongst religious people, but also in those who reject religious arguments. On multiple occasions, I have experienced that my arguments were discarded beforehand based on my tenure at a theological university. Some forget that arguments from religious people are not necessarily religious arguments; they may still be understandable, convincing, and conclusive. Religion may form the heuristic context to discern values, but is not necessarily their sole epistemological source nor provides their sole justification. We need a détente between religion and reason, not an escalation of the battle,

His position, of course, is anathema to Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and to those in more orthodox evangelical churches. At it's root (the use of "tradition, experience, nature, reason, logic, intuition, and positive law") also contradicts the more traditional Reform position that man's reason and experience falls under the consequences of the Fall and, like the rest of our mental and spiritual facilities, suffers the consequences of "total depravity". 

The author concludes by arguing against assisted suicide but supporting euthanasia ("mercy killing") in exceptional situations provided it is authorised beforehand by a Court.

As a medical ethicist and a theologian, I have repeatedly stated that I do not reject euthanasia. I could and can imagine the exceptional case of killing a patient when nothing else can ease unbearable suffering. Many are familiar with the classroom example of the truck driver who is stuck in his cabin after crashing into a concrete wall and begs a bystander to kill him before he is devoured by fire-killing the driver, in my opinion, may be the least bad alternative. This position has brought me criticism from religious voices, especially from those who argue that I should categorically reject any intentional and direct killing of an innocent human being. However, with Martin Luther, echoing St. Augustine, my position on euthanasia is “pecca fortiter” - sin courageously, if you think no other option is left.

As a religious person, I should be open to discern any element of truth, however inconvenient. In my perception, all these developments testify against an aspect that needs to be faced: that legalising assisted dying is seldom the end of a trajectory of deliberations. Instead, it is the onset of new discussions and further expansion of the practice. Legal euthanasia does more than just giving some people the liberty to opt for another way to die; it revolutionises the fabric of society. Not only life but also death increasingly becomes a project. The liberty of some to choose assisted dying obliges everyone else to face that same option at the end of the day. After all, when a society legalises and facilitates killing thousands of its citizens annually, this is not a signal to those patients only. It is a signal to a whole group of patients-and, in the Netherlands, an ever-expanding group of patients and their relatives-that they may in fact be right if they no longer want to live.

Through legalising assisted dying, the liberal society thus bites its tail. I think that there is an inalienable moral right to kill oneself, provided one is competent and knows what one is doing. However, it is unwise to support this right in the form of assistance in dying. In the long run, no society, religious or not, can afford to organise the killing of groups of its own citizens. The best way to guarantee the exceptional character of mercy killing is by keeping it where it is most safely kept: in the Criminal Code. 

Here's a "Christian" case for assisted dying made in 2014 by Reverend Paul Badham, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales:

Jesus’ key teaching
A Christian case for supporting assisted dying is based on Jesus’ teaching that the whole of religious law and prophetic teaching can be summarised as requiring us to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Jesus’ golden rule was that we should always treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Applying this to assisted dying the argument is: When people’s sufferings are so great that they make repeated requests to die, it seems a denial of that loving compassion which is supposed to be the hallmark of Christianity to refuse their requests. If we truly love our neighbours as ourselves how can we deny them the death we would wish for ourselves in such a condition?

Do no murder
Some reject this argument because murder is forbidden by the sixth of the Ten Commandments. However the reason murder is condemned is that it is an act that deprives another person of all that life offers. But when a dying person is already being deprived of life by a terminal illness and wants help to hasten that process, the situation is rather different. However our natural abhorrence of taking another person’s life is the reason why in Britain the campaign is for assisted dying rather than voluntary euthanasia. In voluntary euthanasia the doctor administers a lethal drug. In assisted dying, patients must be able to self-administer so that right to the end it is their own choice.

God and the hour of our death
Some argue that only God should decide the hour of our death. But we need to be consistent. If we truly believed that only God should determine the hour of our death, then we should think it as wrong to use medical means to extend life as to shorten it. In past ages many Christians held precisely that view. Today if a person’s heart stops we assume that the hospital should normally attempt resuscitation even though for most of human history the time when the heart stopped was seen as the time that God had chosen to end that person’s life.

Suffering
Consistency is also needed in our attitude to suffering. We cannot say that that assisted dying is wrong because suffering is part of God’s plan for us unless we are prepared, as Pope John Paul II was, to say that palliative care is also problematic. He believed that dying Christians should moderate their use of pain killers so that they could share in the suffering of Christ. Fortunately few carers adopt that position.

Parallels between birth and death
Similar issues arise with contraception. The papal encyclical against euthanasia uses the same arguments as the encyclical against contraception. Yet the vast majority of Christians today, including most catholic couples, believe in the legitimacy of planning when a new life should begin. To be consistent we should hold that if it is morally legitimate to seek medical assistance in the timing of birth and in the avoidance of suffering during birth it should be equally right to seek medical help and assistance in the timing of death and in the avoidance of suffering while dying.

On a sounder and more traditional note, here is the response of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Pastoral Letter on Assisted Suicide - Cardinal Vincent Nichols

My brothers and sisters, 

This Wednesday, 16 October 2024, a bill will be introduced to Parliament proposing a change in the law to permit assisted suicide. The debate will continue for a number of months, in society and in Parliament, before a definitive vote is held there. This puts in the spotlight crucial questions about the dignity of human life and the care and protection afforded by our society to every human being.

As this debate unfolds there are three points I would like to put before you. I hope that you will take part in the debate, whenever and wherever you can, and that you will write to your Member of Parliament.

The first point is this: Be careful what you wish for.

No doubt the bill put before Parliament will be carefully framed, providing clear and very limited circumstances in which it would become lawful to assist, directly and deliberately, in the ending of a person’s life. But please remember, the evidence from every single country in which such a law has been passed is clear: that the circumstances in which the taking of a life is permitted are widened and widened, making assisted suicide and medical killing, or euthanasia, more and more available and accepted. In this country, assurances will be given that the proposed safeguards are firm and reliable. Rarely has this been the case. This proposed change in the law may be a source of relief to some. But it will bring great fear and trepidation to many, especially those who have vulnerabilities and those living with disabilities. What is now proposed will not be the end of the story. It is a story better not begun.

The second point is this: A right to die can become a duty to die.

A law which prohibits an action is a clear deterrent. A law which permits an action changes attitudes: that which is permitted is often and easily encouraged. Once assisted suicide is approved by the law, a key protection of human life falls away. Pressure mounts on those who are nearing death, from others or even from themselves, to end their life in order to take away a perceived burden of care from their family, for the avoidance of pain, or for the sake of an inheritance.

I know that, for many people, there is profound fear at the prospect of prolonged suffering and loss of dignity. Yet such suffering itself can be eased. Part of this debate, then, must be the need and duty to enhance palliative care and hospice provision, so that there can genuinely be, for all of us, the prospect of living our last days in the company of loved ones and caring medical professionals. This is truly dying with dignity. Indeed, the radical change in the law now being proposed risks bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill.

The third point is this: Being forgetful of God belittles our humanity.

The questions raised by this bill go to the very heart of how we understand ourselves, our lives, our humanity. For people of faith in God - the vast majority of the population of the world - the first truth is that life, ultimately, is a gift of the Creator. Our life flows from God and will find its fulfilment in God. ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ (Job 1:21) To ignore or deny this truth is to separate our humanity from its origins and purpose. We are left, floating free, detached, in a sphere that lacks firm anchors or destiny, thinking that we can create these for ourselves according to the mood of the age, or even of the day.

The clearest expression of this faith is that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. That is the source of our dignity and it is unique to the human person. The suffering of a human being is not meaningless. It does not destroy that dignity. It is an intrinsic part of our human journey, a journey embraced by the Eternal Word of God, Christ Jesus himself. He brings our humanity to its full glory precisely through the gateway of suffering and death. 

We know, only too well, that suffering can bring people to a most dreadful state of mind, even driving them to take their own lives, in circumstances most often when they lack true freedom of mind and will, and so bear no culpability. But this proposed legislation is quite different. It seeks to give a person of sound will and mind the right to act in a way that is clearly contrary to a fundamental truth: our life is not our own possession, to dispose of as we feel fit. This is not a freedom of choice we can take for ourselves without undermining the foundations of trust and shared dignity on which a stable society rests.

As this debate unfolds, then, I ask you to play your part in it. Write to your MP. Have discussions with family, friends and colleagues. And pray. Please remember: be careful what you wish for; the right to die can become a duty to die; being forgetful of God belittles our humanity.

May God bless us all at this critical time.

✠ Cardinal Vincent Nichols
Archbishop of Westminster

The Reality of “Assisted Suicide”

The ‘horrifying’, ‘brutal’ and unspoken truth of what assisted suicide is really like.

In their appeal to end suffering with assisted suicide Carey and co are wide of the mark because they are peddling the myth that only a lethal cocktail of drugs or a deadly jab can deliver a beautiful and serene death. This is a romantic fantasy … deaths of this kind are seldom like that at all. They are far worse.

California legalised assisted suicide in 2015 through its End of Life Option Act, which permitted doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally-ill patients with the promise that an awful death could be avoided. Just a slug of “medication” and the patient keels over like Romeo in Verona.

The public was led to believe it was simple, painless and efficient. Except it isn’t, and in the autumn of 2020 Californian doctors who practised assisted suicide, fed up with dealing with distressed and agitated relatives, gathered to confront the reality of what such deaths are really like and to consider how they could improve them.

Dr Lonny Shavelson, a Berkeley doctor considered to be the leading practitioner of assisted suicide in the state, told MedicalXPress that time and again patients experienced lingering deaths.

“After two hours, people were starting to get concerned, and restless,” Shavelson said. “They wonder what’s happening. People start walking around the room, going into the kitchen. It disrupts the meditative mood. Between two and four hours – that’s not ideal. Anything over four hours we consider to be problematic. I was looking at what was happening and thinking, ‘This isn’t as good as it’s been hyped up to be’.”

“The public think that you take a pill and you’re done,” said Dr Gary Pasternak, chief medical officer of Mission Hospice in San Mateo. “But it’s more complicated than that.”

Although some patients die relatively quickly, many do not. Some hang on for six or nine hours, sometimes days.

In 2019 a patient in Oregon took 47 hours to die from a lethal cocktail and previously another man, a lung cancer sufferer named David Pruitt, ingested his entire prescription of lethal drugs and woke up after 65 hours. “What the hell happened?” he asked. “Why am I not dead?” He declined to attempt suicide again and died naturally a fortnight later. Another patient is known to have taken four days and eight hours to expire. These few cases have come to light in what remains a highly secretive practice.

Yet the truth has an uncanny knack of finding its way to the surface. When it does, it is often horrifying. Dr Brick Lantz, an Oregon orthopaedic surgeon and state director for the American Academy of Medical Ethics, in 2021 warned the British Parliament about the “brutal” and “not infrequent” failures of the drugs used in assisted suicide. “There was a nurse at the bedside of one [patient] who ended up putting a plastic bag over the patient because the patient wasn’t dying.”